The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for maintaining optical signal transmission in an optical fiber which is or will be in need of repair.
Optical fibers are quickly becoming widely used for transmitting information rather than electrical wires in view of the superior bandwidth capabilities of optical fiber and its inherent EMI and RFI immunity. Because of its high bandwidth capability however, a problem exists in the art when an optical fiber is in need of repair since during the repair operation optical signal transmission is interrupted which causes an associated relatively large expense due to the amount of information which is unnecessarily delayed or worse yet lost.